Smoke Out

Well, this past Monday was April 20th. That may not be significant to those of you who don’t live in the Boulder area, but 4/20 at 4:20 p.m. is the traditional Smoke Out on the University of Colorado campus. And what that means is that somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people show up to smoke the evil weed. (Ostensibly to lobby for a change in marijuana laws. Yeah, right!).

Over the past several years the University administration and the police have tried a number of creative means of discouraging the festivities. These have included blocking off the entrances to the chosen location and turning on the sprinklers. Last year they filmed the crowd, posted photos on the Internet, and offered a reward for anyone who would identify a “perpetrator.”

In the run-up to this year, the administration simply asked students and the public nicely to stay home. That didn’t work any better than previous years’ strategies had.

I had a meeting in the front lobby of the University Theater building at 5 p.m. on Monday, and as I approached the area where on-street parking is usually plentiful, I realized that Monday wasn’t a usual day. 20 minutes of searching and about a mile and a half further, I found a place to park and walked back to the campus. I haven’t seen crowds like that — both in terms of numbers or appearance — since Woodstock. (Which, by the way, I got within 14 miles of and then said “Screw it” and left.)

Immediately after the end of my run as Darwin in “The Debate” I shaved my beard and got a hair cut. So instead of looking like a sympathetic and possibly participating overaged hippie, I look like an overaged suburban voyeur.

As luck would have it, the center of the Smoke Out was in Norlin Quad, right in front of the University Theater. Talk about a contact high! From a quarter of a mile away the smell was noticeable — not that I would recognize what MJ smells like, you understand. From 200 yards away, the clouds were visible.

I’m afraid I don’t remember much about the meeting. I do remember being terribly hungry and going out for pizza afterward.